


Tales From Unit 6

by CaveDwellers



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, containment unit 6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:54:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4893724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaveDwellers/pseuds/CaveDwellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a lot that goes on in Unit 6 before Sapphire's fateful transfer. There is also a lot that happens when Ruby and Sapphire aren't around. Small wonder that a lot happens after they leave, too. Allow me to show you what I mean. [A spin-off oneshot collection all about Unit 6 and the characters that live there, also on ff.net]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Taken Ones

**Author's Note:**

> As you might have noticed in the summary, Tales From Unit 6 will be a collection of oneshots all about my story Containment Unit 6. There will be mentionings of OCs and terminology from the original story that will be dropped without explanation, because I will be assuming that you've read Containment Unit 6 first. (I'm not sure that you would care all too much about some random Citrine or Apatite without having read the source material, anyway).  
> I've said this before, and I'll say it again: The concept of Tales From Unit 6 is entirely Spatial's fault. I currently have a list of prompts and headcanons as long as my leg thanks to her. XD  
> This particular chapter, however, was inspired by a conversation with 33 Vi over on ff.net. She wondered how gems topside might feel when they're friends are taken away to Containment Units, never to be seen again.

Nobody knows what happens to gems that are taken away. They just—go.

Ruby hasn’t been around more than a few centuries, so there is still a lot she doesn’t know yet, but she does know this: she never wants to be one of the ones who disappear.

Rumors swirl around the concept like mist, quiet and opaque, obscuring it from ever being truly looked upon and understood. The taken ones are refurbished into power cells for the technology they all use every day. They’re shattered and recycled. They’re forced to fight each other for the amusement of the Diamond Authority. The taken ones never come back, and they’re certainly never heard from again, so it’s all just hearsay passed from trembling lips to worried ears in the brief moments of relative peace between raids on safe houses.

Homeworld never used to be like this.

Stars only know what caused the Diamonds to change their minds, but a little over one-hundred-and-fifty years ago gems started disappearing—asymmetrical gems, in particular, seemed to be the targets of their sweeps.

“Tremolite!” gasps Epidote. Her eyes are wide and frantic as they dart around the small space. “I can’t see Tremolite!”

“Keep your voice down,” Ruby hisses. They and two others are huddled together in the shadows of a second story overhang (neither of which, Ruby notes, are the bright green gem that Epidote is referring to). Nevertheless, all of them are holding their breath as the patrols jog by with their flashing lights and keen eyed gems. The idea—the hope—is that the searching gems won’t think to look up, and if they do the ledge the four of them are all standing on will do its part to obscure them from view.

“But Tremolite, where is she? She’s not here—”

“Shut, up,” Ruby orders in a growling undertone. She gestures to the other two gems with them. “Do you want to be the reason we’re all captured?”

“No, but T—”

“If she’s smart, she’ll avoid them and we’ll find her at the safe house.” When Epidote opens her mouth again, Ruby issues a sharp, _“Shh!”_

“But—”

Ruby, fed up, grabs her by the throat to silence her. Her hands are big, and they wrap around the other gem’s windpipe with ease. She doesn’t make it hard enough to choke, but she does squeeze just enough to make Epidote shut the hell up. She’ll take her lectures on common courtesy later—right now, Epidote’s continued babbling might literally end up being the death of them, and Ruby is not ready to find out what happens to the taken ones firsthand.

The other two gems with them don’t say a word. At least they understand the gravity of the situation.

They wait. It doesn’t take much longer for the patrols to move on, but those few moments are ones in which Ruby’s fingers quake around Epidote’s throat with trepidation, and her gem becomes heated and hammers out a scared, unsteady rhythm in her palm.

Ruby doesn’t know what caused the Diamond Authority that governed Homeworld to change their mind about the asymmetrical gems that have always lived amongst and worked well with the rest of the populace. Perhaps it was the overcrowding caused by the rapid expansion of Kindergarten locations and their subsequent outputs—Homeworld used to be a much smaller place, once upon a time—or perhaps it was something else entirely, some secret danger to asymmetry that Ruby’s own near-three-hundred years hasn’t revealed yet. She doesn’t know why everything suddenly changed one day, all she knows is that she is being hunted with a will and _like hell_ she is going to go down without a fight. If that means gripping a fellow asymmetrical gem by the neck for a couple of minutes to avoid everyone’s capture, then so be it. Epidote will thank her later, after they’ve all made it to the safe house.

Ruby waits until the sounds of the patrol and the glimpses of their lights have disappeared. Then, just in case, she waits a few minutes more.

Epidote gasps dramatically when she is released. “Were you trying to kill me?” she demands in a harsh whisper.

“If I was, you’d already be dead,” Ruby replies through gritted teeth. She’s already regretting not doing just that. How do gems as annoying as that manage to survive so long without being captured, anyway? “You were making way too much noise.”

“That’s only because Tremolite—”

“Isn’t here. Who knows, Epitote? Maybe she went on without you because she thought you were going to get her captured.” Ruby stands, and the other two gems rise as well. She gives a quick look up and down the pathway—checking for any stragglers—before hopping down to the street.

It’s a trap. Maybe Ruby would have realized it, if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with wanting to continue strangling Epidote, but as things are she is caught off guard by a gem she truly never expected to be there. She must have heard Epidote during the initial sweep, because she had been hiding under the overhang on the ground level, waiting for this moment.

Because it’s only one patrol-gem, Epidote and the other two manage to run, but Ruby was unlucky enough to not only jump down first, but also to touch down closest to her. If she had seen this coming, she probably would have been able to fight it off—very few gems can match her Mohs, after all—but because she’s caught off guard the patrol-gem has the advantage, and she manages to poof Ruby with three swift jabs of her sword.

Nobody knows what happens to the taken ones.

Ruby supposes, in the split second before her damaged projection retreats into her gem and everything goes dark, that she’s about to find out.


	2. Apatite's Gossip Network: Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How does Apatite get all of that gossip on/about the other cohorts, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spatial and I have been batting this idea around for a while, and this chapter has been half-written on my hard drive for days. Just recently found the time to finish it :) Ironically, I was actually just asked by airamcg to talk about this. Well, here's the answer!

It starts off as a fascination that passes the time. Her predecessor, an asymmetrical, round-bellied, too-nice-for-her-own-good, indigo-hued tanzanite, supplied the inmates with knowledge of what was happening in the other cohorts—which Supervisors to watch out for, who was quarreling with whom, that kind of thing. The more exciting stuff—the drama—was reenacted by gems who shapeshifted into their own approximations of the subjects for the entertainment of the rest of the cohort.

But Tanzanite, with her distinctive kite-cut gem, is always with them. Though she does tend to frustrate her cohort by always being the last gem to leave the rec center, she never sneaks off to consult with anyone. Sometimes she gives friendly waves to other cohorts as they transition (if they pass each other—which, with the tangle of halls in Unit 6, is a rarity at best), but she’s stupidly friendly as a general rule. Besides, what sort of gossip can be conveyed with a quick wave, anyway? Certainly not the sort with the level of detail that Tanzanite divulges to the cohort on a regular basis. The only unusual thing Tanzanite ever does is read. She must have read all of the beaten-up novels in the rec center at least a hundred times now, enough that she can probably recite them all by heart, but do you think that stops her?

“Isn’t this strange to any of you?” Apatite says to her friends. “What if she’s just making it all up?”

Tourmaline shrugs her lace-encrusted shoulders. “So what if she is? That doesn’t change how entertaining the stories are.”

Citrine and Ruby, who are sitting companionably on either side of Rhodochrosite, both make apathetic gestures. They’re not quite in tandem, but they do get close.

“I’ve never thought too much about it, to be honest,” says Ruby.

“Have you ever tried asking her?” says Rhodochrosite, ever the voice of diplomatic solutions.

“Why should it be a secret?” says Apatite pointedly. “If Tanzanite is making everything up, that’s fine—I’m just as bored as the next gem—but she needs to be up front about it!”

“Maybe she thinks everyone already knows,” Rho suggests.

“It’s possible,” says Citrine. “I mean, how long has this been going on? A couple hundred years, at least.”

“I think it’s been a millennium already,” says Tourmaline, idly inspecting the tips of her pink-streaked hair.

“So _none_ of you are curious about how she’s doing any of this,” says Apatite flatly.

“Um, no?” is Ruby’s reply. “What’s there to mind? It’s not like she’s hurting anybody.”

“I’m with Ruby,” says Citrine. The light orange hue of her face immediately deepens to a sunset color. “I mean, I agree! That’s all; I just agree.”

Tourmaline raises her eyebrows. “Methinks the gem doth protest too much.”

Apatite is inclined to agree, but she’s known about Citrine’s attraction to Ruby for the last several years now, so this is nothing new to her.

Rho laughs, her slender form shaking with it.

Ruby leans around the pink gem to give Citrine a suspicious look. She _almost_ understands what she’s seeing—it’s painful to watch. “What’s wrong with you?” the corundum asks.

“Nothing! Nothing at all—I don’t even know why you’d bring anything up. Aren’t I acting normal?”

“No.”

“Tourmaline, no one is asking you!”

This discussion is getting nowhere. It is also getting horrendously off topic, and that only aggravates Apatite more.

“How are none of you more concerned about this?” Apatite bursts out. She leaps to her feet. “That’s it; I’m confronting her directly!”

Apatite marches off before any of them can say anything, though a deeply cynical part of her muses that they won’t because they don’t care one wit about Tanzanite and her elaborate lies.

The indigo gem smiles tranquilly when a shadow passes over her book. “Hello, Apatite! How can I help you?”

“How are you getting all of this information?” she demands, her arms akimbo and her voice harsh—no pleasantries here, no ma’am!

Tanzanite blinks. She is either impressed or confused, and to be honest Apatite doesn’t know her well enough to tell the difference between the two. “What information, specifically, do you mean?” she wonders. “I have a couple of sources.”

 _“Where?”_ Apatite throws her arms in the air. “Unless there is some secret coded language embedded into the structure of this very rec center, you see and interact with all the same gems as the rest of us, and we are kept pointedly isolated from the other cohorts, so how, Tanzanite? Explain to me how these sources of yours work.”

Tanzanite’s smile falters. She shuts her book. “You’re really worked up about this, aren’t you?”

“What was your first guess?” snaps Apatite. She jabs a dark blue finger in the round gem’s direction. “Unlike everyone else, I’m on to you and these stories you’re passing off as interpersonal information.”

Tanzanite glances down at the book in her lap, and then, for no reason that Apatite can fathom, bursts into laughter. She laughs so hard that tears well up in the corners of her eyes, and she starts wheezing.

Apatite lets her have her fun, but she’s staring the other gem down the entire time, her teeth gnashing and her fists clenched and quivering. What is so damn funny? She doesn’t know, but as surely as she will never see the light of day again in her life, she is going to find out.

“I guess that is what it looks like, isn’t it?” Tanzanite finally gasps, wiping away her tears of amusement. “Oh, my stars, I haven’t laughed like that in a while. Thank you, Apatite. I needed that!”

“Are you going to dance around the subject for the rest of our recreation period, or are you actually going to answer my question?” Apatite grounds out. It feels like she is being played with, and Apatite _does not appreciate_ that. The more time that passes, the less she likes Tanzanite.

“If you really want to know—”

“Why would I still be standing here, if I didn’t _really want to know?”_

Tanzanite smiles like she understands Apatite’s frustration implicitly, but how the hell could she? She’s the source of it!

“Here, sit down.” Tanzanite pats the space on the bench next to her. “I can show you what I’m actually reading.”

This gives Apatite pause. Her shoulders relax, and her fists unclench. “Just like that? You’ll show me?” she asks, feeling dull and wooden.

“Nobody’s ever been interested in the mechanics of it before,” Tanzanite explains. “But it might actually make things easier if I had someone else who could help!”

Slowly, Apatite perches on the edge of the bench with her palms resting on her skinny thighs. When she turns her head to look at Tanzanite’s old beat-up book, her thin, waist length hair slips over her shoulder and hangs to cover her expression from the rest of the rec center like a curtain. “Okay,” she says, though her demeanor feels rusty from switching gears so fast. Damn it, but her curiosity is getting the better of her. “How do you do it?”

“Each book is dedicated to the four cohorts here in Unit 6,” Tanzanite explains. “We don’t have numbers, per se, but this—” she lifts the book in her hand for emphasis “—belongs to the cohort who has the next shift here at the rec center.”

Apatite’s eyes widen. “You’re talking to each other in code.”

Tanzanite’s smile widens as she nods. “The Supervisors don’t come in here—and if they do, they certainly aren’t concerning themselves with a couple of dog-eared novels,” she says. She opens the book, and the first page of text has been folded practically in half. “It’s not hard, once you understand what you’re looking at—what word do you think they’re pointing at here?”

The moment Tanzanite says ‘point’, Apatite understands. “The edge of the dog-ear, of course!”

Tanzanite grins, pleased by her speedy uptake. “That’s the gist of it—you just move on chronologically from there. I must warn you, though: sometimes deciphering whether they mean the entire word or just the first letter can get tricky. Likewise with the breaks in statements—whoa! Okay, err, why don’t you give it a try?”

Apatite has snatched the book from her hands. She crosses her legs at the knee as she begins excitedly flipping through pages. Actual communication with the other cohorts, and it’s been going on for centuries!

“Hematite and Dolomite’s feud has been ruining morale for the entire cohort,” she says. “What are they fighting about?”

“They’ve always been rivals,” says Tanzanite with an airy wave of her pudgy hand. “They’ve just been acting up more than usual, these days.”

“Wait.” She stops, frowning. “The upper right corner is always the one that’s folded. Why is the lower left corner folded up on this page?”

“Oh, you’ve come across some of the choreography notes,” says Tanzanite. She leans over to check the page number that is hidden under the dog-ear. “This particular informant likes to use the wooden blocks to show the placement of individuals in their more complex notes—you know how they all seem to have arbitrary numbers carved into them? This is why. Whatever arrangement they are left in is replicated at the end of each recreation period—with the chess pieces, too. That’s why I’m always one of the last gems out.”

And here Apatite was thinking that the round gem just couldn’t figure out how to hustle.

“It’s brilliant,” she breathes. But then she stops. “You handle all of this information alone? No delegation whatsoever?”

“Not until now,” says Tanzanite with a small gesture. “Nobody’s seemed interested.”

Apatite has her own opinions on that. Hasn’t Tanzanite noticed the verve in which the five talcs huddle up and gossip with their sisters? Aside from her own observations, Apatite gets a lot of information about this cohort from them. Nobody really notices a gem with such low Mohs scampering about, after all—and if they do, talcs are so weak that they are presumed utterly nonthreatening. Even Apatite, with her Mohs of 5 and her shield of hair, can’t get near other gems the way that the talc sisters can.

The gears in her mind are beginning to turn. An aspiration is already asserting itself: Apatite wants this position. She wants to be in control of the information flowing discretely to and from this recreation center. She wants to streamline the system, to recruit helpers, expand, know _everything_.

Apatite hates being left out of the loop. It’s a pretty well-known fact about her—just ask her friends. It’s the reason she confronted Tanzanite to begin with, after all.

She looks at the cohort’s round-bellied, indigo-hued, soon-to-be-dethroned informant and smiles. “May I see the rest?”


	3. Onyx, Reshuffled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Any single-gem transfer that’s ever happened in all Onyx’s long millennia in Unit 6 has never ended happily. They are all shattered in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 15756% Spatial's fault, though I am having fun seeing how many prompts I can cram into a single oneshot. ;P

She’s told the transfer is due to cohort numbers being skewed across the Containment Unit, and the labor force on this one needs to be padded. Officially, that’s why the rule to never make a gem switch cohorts is being broken.

Onyx doesn’t believe that malarkey for a second. She’s the only gem that’s being transferred—that’s not number padding, that’s being singled out. Additionally, everyone knows that forcing a lone gem to switch cohorts within the same Containment Unit is an unofficial death sentence. “Oh, we had no idea the cohort would turn on her like that,” the Supervisors will croon as they bite the insides of their cheeks to keep from smirking in triumph.

Any single-gem transfer that’s ever happened in all Onyx’s long millennia in Unit 6 has never ended happily. They are all shattered in the end. The Supervisors are negligent and cruel, but they can’t be _that_ stupid.

They are, however, blasted fools if they think Onyx can’t see through what they’re trying to do.

She has a Mohs of 7. Not bad. She might survive long enough to make friends and melt into the background. Perhaps that strategy might work.

It’s doubtful, though.

The Supervisors will say that transferring you into another cohort during their recreational hours—even if you have already had yours today—is a favor. A courtesy, so you can find someone to socialize with before you get to work in the mines, or the forge, or the assembly lines, or basic Containment Unit maintenance again. Supervisors will tell you they’re being kind.

They aren’t.

Onyx has survived in the Containment Unit system long enough to know that rec times are when the most in-cohort bullying happens. It’s in the rec center—the only six hours where the cohort is not laboring—that unpopular gems are tortured most.

What a better way for an ‘accident’ to happen than to make a gem switch cohorts during rec hours? Even if Onyx isn’t outright confronted, she will still be resented for having two recreational periods in the same day.

She’s not an idiot. She knows what the Supervisors are doing.

Combating what’s happening, however, is a different matter entirely.

Onyx’s suspicions are first sparked when she is not immediately confronted upon arrival. She tenses, and her hand slowly travels close to the gem set in her chest. What sort of tactic is this?

It isn’t until she’s positioned herself in an easily defensible corner that she is bombarded.

“What are you doing?” asks an asymmetrical talc. She’s rapier-thin, and chalky-hued, and frilly. Even her hair, tightly curled around her ears and chin, looks delicate and girlish. Her eyes are big and shining; innocent looking. Her head also only comes up to Onyx’s ribs, due to her gem being on the back of her left hand.

“Not drawing attention to myself?” says Onyx, and she’s only being half-sarcastic. She flicks her dark bangs out of her face when she notices another flash of white in her peripheral.

“You’re the transfer, right?” says another talc as she approaches. She is built very much the same as her sister, except her chalky hues are greeer. “From another cohort, or another Unit?”

Onyx’s nose must have twitched just so, because the first talc makes a noise of realization and says, “Nah, she knew the most defensible space; she’s been in Unit 6 for a while.”

“Do you know why you alone were moved?” asks a third talc as she arrives. This one has a more translucent white-chalk palette.

“Did you do anything to mess with the Supervisors? Is this their revenge?” asks a fourth. Her palette is somewhat rusty in color, but still mostly white.

Onyx is surrounded at this point—how many stars-forsaken talcs are in this cohort, anyway? What happened in this cohort to make gems of such lowly Mohs so bold?

“Even if I told you,” Onyx says. “You wouldn’t believe me.” She is symmetrical, after all. It’s hard to other gems to conceive that she’s not volatile.

Except the only gem who didn’t think so hadn’t even needed Onyx to say anything. That diminutive blue sapphire had seen through all of Onyx’s attempts to be as aggressive and cruel as she was presumed to be, almost as if Onyx weren’t even trying at all. She defied everything Ruby had obviously told her without even an ounce of trepidation.

To be honest, Onyx is glad that gem is gone. The way she looked at you from under the aquamarine of her hair was chilling, and not in a good way—besides, Onyx is the only one who should be able to control how she’s seen. If she wants to make herself into a monster so that the other gems in Unit 6 will leave her the hell alone, she has that right.

Not that she’s doing a very good job of that at the moment, but still. It _is_ her right.

“Revenge, then,” says the talc with the rusty palette.

The green-hued talc sister glances over her shoulder. There are a lot of gems she might be looking at, though, so Onyx doesn’t glean much from the motion. “So what did you do, exactly?”

“You look like you should be on the Supervisor’s side, more often than not,” says the opaque-white talc matter of factly, and Onyx realizes that she has been given a very blatant once over in that brief moment of distraction. The talc props the knuckles of her gem-supporting hand on her skinny waist, jostling the girlish frills of her skirt. “That’s what symmetrical gems do, right? Help the Supes gang up on the defects?”

It only takes a second for Onyx to fall into character. She wrenches her long-handled warhammer out of her gem and slams the butt of the staff into the metal floor as she takes an abrupt, threatening step towards the weak little gem. “Yeah, that’s right, I’m just like them—so why don’t you get out of my face!”

The talc sisters scatter, but there’s something about the way they do it that’s unnerving. Whatever information they were hoping to get out of her, she had inadvertently given it to them. In fact, it’s almost as if they _planned_ for this to be the moment they dispersed—but that’s not possible, right? Are things really that organized in this cohort, or is it just the talcs?

No, that doesn’t make sense. If even _talcs_ are this organized, things are only going to get more structured and clever as you move up the Mohs hierarchy. Onyx keeps her hammer out as she reestablishes her defensive stance in her easily defensible corner. She tucks her loose, elbow-length hair behind her ears and strains to listen to what’s being muttered around her—and there’s a lot. Single gem transfers are often the talk of the town, so to speak. She’s never been close to any cohort’s informant due to inherent mistrust over her symmetry, but she knows about them and the kind of work they do, and whenever a new gem joins a cohort their name and that of the local informant are usually what get whispered the most— _oh, wait until X hears about this_ ; that sort of thing.

Except, this time, there isn’t one. She hears her own name tossed around a lot, but there is no X that anyone is murmuring about, though. Not even a whisper of the gem’s name.

Does this cohort… not have an informant?

No, that’s impossible. Intra-cohort communication (read: gossip) is the secret backbone of Unit 6. It’s what keeps gems entertained, buoys morale, helps them all feel connected despite the inherent isolation of being buried deep within Homeworld’s crust and away from the rest of society. The intra-cohort communication is also what warns other cohorts which inmates and Supervisors to avoid—it saves people. There is no way that this cohort is isolated from the other three in Unit 6.

So, what? Everyone here is just trained to keep from talking about her?

“I thought I heard banging!”

Onyx’s head snaps up just in time to see a nearly symmetrical watermelon tourmaline barge through the crowd. Her color palette is primarily a rich green, with pink only for accents on the lacy mermaid dress that so deliberately cinches itself around her curvaceous projection. Her hair is styled in a curly bob around her round, delightedly grinning face. She’s tall—not as tall as Onyx, who probably has a solid three or four inches on her, but she’s close.

She also marches right up to Onyx as if they’re old friends, much to the obvious dismay of the asymmetrical dark blue apatite with the flyaway hair and painful looking striations in her projection’s arms.

 _“Tourmaline!”_ the apatite cries out, aghast. “Would you just—oh, what am I even saying? She’s doing it anyway.”

For Onyx, who wouldn’t have known this gem if her life depended on it, being approached so boisterously is nothing short of problematic.

“Whoa, hey, back off—I said _back off!”_ Onyx brandishes her warhammer to keep the green-and-pink gem at bay. Her jaw is set, and her eyes are narrowed. She’ll fight, if she has to. It’s never too early to start a reputation as the gem nobody wants to mess with.

In a flash of light, Onyx finds herself staring at the head of a very unfamiliar warhammer. Tourmaline’s is shorter and—well, pinker, but truth be told her hammer actually heavier than Onyx’s own.

Tourmaline has dropped in a stance very similar to the one Onyx is currently poised in, but it seems quite perfunctory when she’s still beaming like they’re long lost friends. “You _are_ as tall as Ruby said!”

Onyx blinks. She’s so stunned by this dialogue that she nearly lowers her weapon. “…What?”

“You know, Ruby—you used to be more than friends, back in the day?” And Tourmaline gives her this _look_. Onyx doesn’t even have the words to describe the amount of innuendo and exasperation existing simultaneously in this one expression.

That’s when it clicks. “Oh, no.” Onyx can’t help it. She straightens up and slams the hilt of her hammer into the floor again. “Stars help me—you’re telling me this is _her_ old cohort?”

It all makes so much sense now. The cohort Ruby and that creepy sapphire occupied for three thousand years is well renowned throughout the Containment Unit as not only the safest, but also the most highly structured group. Between Ruby and her little friend definitively beating the snot out of every bully they so much as heard rumors about, the cohort’s informant is the one that streamlined and refined the gossip system currently in use throughout the entirety of Unit 6.

And this is the cohort Onyx is a part of now.

She can think of at least three different gems who would literally kill to be in her position, potential alienation and shattering be damned.

“What, you didn’t already know?” asks Tourmaline blankly. She, too, straightens up. She then promptly leans on the weighty head of her hammer like it’s an armrest. The pose looks good—languid, even—but decidedly practiced. Has she been _planning_ for this conversation? “Didn’t your informant tell you?”

Onyx scowls. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“It was an honest question, if you can believe that.”

Onyx gestures pointedly to her gem. “Informants don’t go near me. One of the bad guys, remember?”

A peculiar expression crosses Tourmaline’s face, but that’s when Onyx catches a glimpse of one of the talcs talking to her apatite friend.

Everything comes together after that, and her eyes fly open. None of it ever made sense in her last cohort, those whispered rumors about an apatite finding out about This or That, wondering what she would do about Event A or B.

She looks so weak. Well, apatites don’t have very high Mohs to begin with, but those striations, those thin arms…

But all of the pieces fit. Her reaction to Tourmaline, Tourmaline’s seemingly implicit knowledge about Onyx (well, part of that is probably Ruby’s fault, but still). No other conclusion really makes sense.

“That’s _her,”_ Onyx says, torn between shock and incredulity. “She’s the one—!”

Tourmaline abruptly scowls. “You know, I’m not sure I appreciate how much focus you’re putting on everything else. I’m the one who’s having a conversation with you, you know.”

Onyx blinks, bemused and suspicious (which, to be fair, is how she wears bemusement these days). What gives this tourmaline a right to be so familiar with her, anyway? “Have we ever actually met before?” she asks outright.

“No.” This does not perturb Tourmaline as much as Onyx thinks it should, because then she grins. It’s a nice smile, Onyx supposes, but still far too personal and forward coming from a gem who might actually be able to pose a physical threat to her—a gem with whom she should be acquaintances, at best. “But we have now!”

There is such a hefty tone of implication in that last statement that Onyx can only bristle, uncomfortable. What in the cosmos had Ruby told these people about her? If she were still here, Onyx would be going after her.

Except Ruby isn’t here. Onyx is at her old cohort instead, and one of Ruby’s old friends has apparently taken a shine to her. Whatever her reasons or motives, right now Tourmaline’s overt friendliness may just be what helps Onyx survive this rec time, and all of the others to come until she fully assimilates with the rest of the cohort (if that is even possible; she’s doubtful).

She had wanted a way to make it through this transfer more or less unscathed, hadn’t she? Well, this might be a way. Beggars can’t be choosers, and if Tourmaline has connections with _the_ Apatite, well…

Onyx makes herself smile. She’s not used to smiling, it feels odd an inappropriate on her face, but she thinks she manages without making herself look too toothy and animalistic. “Yes, I suppose we have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I left the reason why Onyx is in Unit 6 ambiguous on purpose, but I think there's a healthy dollop of implication in the way her perspective presents itself. ;P 
> 
> As always, if there is anything you'd like to see discussed in these oneshots please feel free to contact me here in the comments, PM CaveDwellers on ff.net, or shoot an ask to theladyforester.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> If there is something about Unit 6 that you would like me to discuss, or a character you would like me to check in with post-Rupphire's escape, or anything like that, please feel free to leave a comment here, or PM CaveDwellers over on ff.net, or send an ask to theladyforester over on tumblr :)


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